The present invention relates to data center infrastructure, and more particularly, this invention relates to providing a distributed routing mechanism for a virtual switch enabled by a Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links (TRILL)-based fabric network.
Distributed Fabric Protocol (DFP) is a method which enables multiple switches to be grouped together to form a distributed virtual switch, where DFP unifies the management plane (it is a centralized management plane). DFP utilizes TRILL as the fabric protocol to “glue” the data plane of this virtual switch via Ethernet. Since TRILL is a Layer-2 (L2) protocol, to provide multi-path support, in conventional systems, the Layer-3 (L3) support on this kind of virtual switch is troublesome. However, in these conventional systems, using external routers for L3 support results in the number of hops required for routing of the east-west traffic to be too great.
Accordingly, a system and/or method of overcoming the problems in conventional systems to allow for efficient. L3 support in a TRILL-based fabric network would be very beneficial.